Lauren Greenfield’s “Generation Wealth” is an extraordinary visual history of our growing obsession with wealth. Weaving two and a half decades of work into an epic narrative, Greenfield has createda revelatory cultural documentation of wealth for viewers to explore through a retrospective film, book and exhibition.

Through riveting first-person interviews, Greenfield’s journey starts in Los Angeles and spreadsacross America and beyond, as she documents how we export the values of materialism, celebrity culture, and social statusto every corner of the globe. We embark on this journey with Greenfield as she travels the world – from Los Angeles to Moscow, Dubai to China – bearing witness to the global boom-and–bust economy and documenting its complicated consequences.

We hear the stories of students, single parents, and families overwhelmed by crushing debt,yet determined to purchase luxury houses, cars, and clothing. We visit the homes and observe the rituals of the internationalelite—from Bel-Air to Monaco, Russia to China. We gain intimate access into the lives of those that rose to extraordinary wealth and then lost “big” during the global economic crash of 2008.And we encounter the A-list celebrities we follow on reality TV and social media, thesame influencers who shape our consumer desires and senseof self.

Provoking serious reflection, “Generation Wealth”is not about the rich, but about the desire to be wealthy, at any cost.

GENERATION WEALTH Directed by Lauren Greenfield

Lauren Greenfield’s postcard from the edge of the American Empire captures a portrait of a materialistic, image-obsessed culture. Simultaneously photographic journey, memoir, and historical essay, the film bears witness to the global boom–bust economy, the corrupted American Dream and the human costs of late stage capitalism, narcissism and greed. (distributed by Amazon Studios)

The Nobel Peace Center proudly announces that it will host the highly acclaimed photo exhibition, GENERATION WEALTH by Lauren Greenfield, created by the internationally renowned American photographer and filmmaker. This will be the first showing of the photo exhibition in Europe, which was originally produced by and debuted at the prestigious Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles. This photo exhibit, an extraordinary visual record and thematic investigation of our cultural obsession with wealth, celebrity, and image, will be on view at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, a distinguished arena for documentary photography and engagement with pressing social issues, from February 13, 2018 through August 20, 2018.

The first major retrospective of Greenfield’s work, the exhibition features nearly 200 photographs, numerous first-person interviews, and documentary film footage, forming a thematic investigation of how the pursuit of wealth, and its material trappings and elusive promises of happiness, has evolved since the late 1990s. Weaving together stories about affluence, beauty, body image, competition, corruption, fantasy, and excess, Greenfield’s sweeping project questions the distance between value and commodity in a globalized consumerist culture.The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph published by Phaidon, which reached the best-seller list of Amazon’s Best Art and Photography Books of 2017 and was honored by the Lucie Award for Best Photo Book of the Year.

Greenfield’s lushly colored photographs—densely packed with visual information and paired with candid interviews with those pictured—are alternately shocking, humorous, touchingly vulnerable, and, often, unnervingly brash. The exhibition offers an insightful investigation into the pursuit of wealth, and its material trappings and elusive promises of happiness, and how it has evolved since the early 1990s.

Lauren Greenfield’s filmed and photographic works have long been supported by the Annenberg Foundation. “Lauren Greenfield has given us nothing short of an x-ray of our ambitions and ideals. In all of contemporary photography, no one is better at exploring the tension between what we covet and who we really are—between the mad dash for affluence and the price we pay for that pursuit,” said Wallis Annenberg, Chairman of the Board, President and CEO of the Annenberg Foundation. “To me, Lauren Greenfield is so much more than a groundbreaking artist; she’s a sociologist, a storyteller, an ironist and a keen humorist. This is a wonderful, timely, thought-provoking body of work.”

The exhibit is currently on display at the ICP Museum in New York, often referred to as the world’s leading institution dedicated to photography and visual culture.

“We are very happy to be the first museum to present GENERATION WEALTH, in Europe. It’s a critically important exhibition that speaks volumes about the pervasiveness of consumer culture on a global scale. I believe that Norwegians recognize a similar trend in our society and we do believe that the exhibition will provoke timely and much-needed debate on inequality, consumerism and excess,” said Liv Tørres, Director of The Nobel Peace Center.

“Beginning in Los Angeles in the ’90s, I examined the ‘influence of affluence’ as media and globalization exported our notions of success around the world. The title of the project and some of the pictures could mislead the reader to think that this is a work about the one percent, about people who are wealthy. It is not. This work is about the aspiration for wealth and how that has become a driving force—and at the same time an increasingly unrealistic goal—for individuals from all classes of society”, says Greenfield. “I hope this work can be a wake-up call and help show that our addiction to consumerism is ultimately unsustainable for our environment, our communities, our economies, and our families. I am honored to show this work at the Nobel Peace Center, a beacon for peace, social change, and humanitarian values throughout the world.”

About the photographer

Lauren Greenfield is an Emmy Award®–winning documentary filmmaker and photographer who is considered a preeminent chronicler of consumerism, youth culture, and gender identity (Fast Forward, Girl Culture, and THIN). Her documentary film, The Queen of Versailles, won her the Best Director Award at Sundance in 2012 and numerous other best director awards. Greenfield’s photographs have been widely published, exhibited, and collected by museums around the world. Her #LikeAGirl video was seen by 214 million global viewers and garnered more than 100 awards. Her latest feature-length film, also named Generation Wealth, will premiere opening night of the Sundance Film Festival in January, 2018.

About the Annenberg Space for Photography

The Annenberg Space for Photography is a cultural destination dedicated to exhibiting both digital and print photography in an intimate environment. The space features state-of-the-art, high-definition digital technology as well as traditional prints by some of the world’s most renowned photographers and a selection of emerging photographic talents as well. The venue, an initiative of the Annenberg Foundation and its trustees, is the first solely photographic cultural destination in the Los Angeles area, and it creates a new paradigm in the world of photography.

Facts about the Nobel Peace Center

one of Norway’s most visited museums with app 250 000 vistors per year

presents the Nobel Peace Prize laureates and their work, in addition to telling the story of Alfred Nobel

is an arena for debate and reflection around topics such as war, peace and conflict resolution

is internationally recognized for its emphasis on documentary photography and interactive technology

KYOTOGRAPHIE 2018KYOTOGRAPHIE INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL

6th edition “UP”

2018.4.14 Sat – 5.13 Sun

Our theme for 2018 is “UP.” In today’s world it is easy to feel burdened, pulled down by the issues we face personally and as a global community. In 2018, KYOTOGRAPHIE invites you to look around, to look inside, in order to better look UP and trigger new personal and collective impetus towards ourselves and each other, to change our world through awareness, action and creation.
Our hope is that visitors encounter UP in the various forms presented in KYOTOGRAPHIE 2018 and engage with these diverse values, in turn changing mindsets and going UP in our own way!

250 Bowery, New York, NY 10012

GENERATION WEALTH by Lauren Greenfield presents twenty-five years of work by Greenfield, who uses photography, oral history, and film to examine the pervasive influence of money, status, and celebrity in America and abroad. The first major retrospective of Greenfield’s work, the exhibition features nearly 200 photographs, numerous first-person interviews, and documentary film footage, forming a thematic investigation of how the pursuit of wealth, and its material trappings and elusive promises of happiness, has evolved since the late 1990s. Weaving together stories about affluence, beauty, body image, competition, corruption, fantasy, and excess, Greenfield’s sweeping project questions the distance between value and commodity in a globalized consumerist culture.

Greenfield’s lushly colored photographs are densely packed with visual information. These images and the ways in which the sitters present themselves are alternately shocking, humorous, touchingly vulnerable, and, often, unnervingly brash, a quality that reveals the trust Greenfield builds with the people on the other side of her camera. Paired with candid interviews of the sitters, each picture and encounter behind it is an attempt to understand what motivates individuals in their pursuit of the “good life.” Taken as a broader social document, the accumulation and intersection of their stories, which are primarily American but also include perspectives from Ireland, Iceland, the United Arab Emirates, China, and Russia, explore the separation between inherent personal values and the priorities that are marketed to consumers en masse.

GENERATION WEALTH chronicles a progressive distortion of the American Dream in the twenty-first century and questions its sustainability. By organizing twenty-five years of work into one complex narrative, Greenfield also seeks to better understand the system that ties so many of our largest commercial industries—among them fashion, entertainment, real estate, and banking—together and how their standards shape our behavior.

Lauren Greenfield was born in 1966 in Boston, Massachusetts, raised in Los Angeles, and earned her B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University in 1987. Greenfield’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including ELLE, The Guardian, Harper’s Bazaar, Le Monde, Marie Claire, National Geographic, New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. She is the director of four full-length documentary films, including the Emmy-nominated Thin (2006) and award-winning Queen of Versailles (2012), and five documentary shorts. Greenfield’s latest feature-length documentary Wealth: The Influence of Affluence will be released in the fall of 2017.

GENERATION WEALTH by Lauren Greenfield was originally shown at and created by the Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles. The exhibtion is accompanied by a monograph published by Phaidon.

“GENERATION WEALTH by Lauren Greenfield” examines the influence of affluence over the last 25 years, illustrating the globalization of materialism, celebrity culture and social status.

This timely, thought-provoking collection explores how “keeping up with the Joneses” has become Keeping Up with the Kardashians, magnifying the aspirational gap between what we want and what we can afford. The exhibit is not about the rich, but the pervasive desire for more.

The Annenberg Space for Photography is located at 2000 Avenue of the Stars (Century City), admission and parking is free to the public. Open Wednesday to Sunday until August 13th, 2017. For more information click on the VI$IT button below.

“At its best, Greenfield’s work provides a shocking, rigorous, and needed visual language for society’s worst excesses. A decade ago, to visit this world might have seemed like cultural anthropology. It might even have been an optional exercise. Today, in the age of Donald, Melania, and the Mnuchins, it is a necessary, even captivating, task—if, at times, a repulsive one.” – NY Review of Books

“This body of work is extraordinary, fascinating, and an almost anthropological look at the ways in which wealth and status are ­displayed.” – Library Journal

“Lauren Greenfield’s photographs range from hilarious to terrifying, sometimes in the same image. The images are unjudgemental – dystopian shock and awe somewhere at the end of Empire – and yet moving: she makes it personal. It could have been me.” —Brian Eno

“Like Dante, Lauren Greenfield has managed to capture the true depravity of the world.”—Errol Morris

“Generation Wealth is a comprehensive study of excess and evolution. Revolting and revelatory, sobering and stunning. Lauren Greenfield is the Doris Kearns Goodwin of the visual medium.” —Jamie Lee Curtis

“A staggering indictment of materialism.” —Smithsonian Magazine

“Over the last 25 years, Greenfield, who is as much sociologist as photographer, has turned her camera on every imaginable expression of wealth and, as such, is uniquely qualified to comment on our increasingly off-the-rails obsession with affluence.” —Fast Company

“Lauren Greenfield: Generation Wealth” is both a retrospective and an investigation into the subject of wealth over the last twenty-five years. Greenfield has traveled the world – from Los Angeles to Moscow, Dubai to China – bearing witness to the global boom-and-bust economy and documenting its complicated consequences. Provoking serious reflection, this book is not about the rich, but about the desire to be wealthy, at any cost.

Hardcover: 504 pages

Publisher: Phaidon Press (May 15, 2017)

Language: English

“From Bel Air to Beijing, Lauren Greenfield has an unparalleled gift for capturing modern wealth in all its baroque permutations. Her images are viscerally intimate-sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, and always unforgettable. Generation Wealth is that rare masterpiece that will keep you engrossed from cover to cover and lingering on the memory of its images long after you’ve put it down.” —Kevin Kwan, bestselling author of “Crazy Rich Asian”

“Greenfield is a prodigious talent, and this book is a masterpiece. If I had the privilege of putting together the time capsule left underground for future generations, I am certain that Generation Wealth would be in the box.” —Juliet Schor

“With a golden cover and 650-odd images inside, [Generation Wealth] is a sociological record of the extreme measures taken to acquire and spend money, what Greenfield calls “the influence of affluence.” —The New York Times

“[A]n anthropological deep-dive into the way the very idea of wealth has infected the human psyche globally.” —Los Angeles Times

Author –Lauren Greenfield is an Emmy-award-winning photographer and filmmaker. A preeminent chronicler of youth culture, gender, and consumerism, her documentary The Queen of Versailles won the Best Documentary Director Award at Sundance in 2012. Her photographs have been widely published, exhibited – and collected – and her Super Bowl commercial, Like a Girl, went viral and swept the advertising awards of 2015.

Contributor – Juliet Schor is an author, economist, cultural critic, and professor of sociology at Boston College. Her research focuses on the economics of work, spending, the environment, and consumer culture.

Contributor – Trudy Wilner Stack was Curator of Exhibitions & Collections at the Center for Creative Photography, the University of Arizona for over a decade, after holding positions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the International Center of Photography, and the Birmingham Museum of Art. She has curated dozens of exhibitions of contemporary and historical photography around the world, and is a frequent contributing author and lecturer.

“Through Greenfield’s lens, the accumulation of wealth comes off more as a destructive addiction than a path to self-improvement. She shoots like a documentarian, both empathetic and non-judgmental when confronted with women who use plastic surgery to cope with family strife, or with white collar criminals.” —Bloomberg Pursuits

“Generation Wealth takes us down the yellow brick road where we are able to see who we, as a collective, are becoming. Like Studs Terkel with a camera, Greenfield’s lens allows us to watch the transmogrification of the American Dream of success through hard work, modesty and discipline turn into a nightmare of conspicuous wealth, excess and addiction…Whether the photographs are humorous, heart-wrenching or both we never feel judgement, just observation and that observation gives us room to know we are all complicit in varying degrees.” —Jennifer Beals

“Offers a gold-encrusted portrait of our time.” —Huffington Post

“Oh please, Americans do not hate the rich; they want to be them. Every American believes that they are the impending rich, and that will never change.”— Fran Lebowitz

We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.

In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.

No judgement of taste is innocent. In a word, we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu brilliantly illuminates this situation of the middle class in the modern world. France’s leading sociologist focusses here on the French bourgeoisie, its tastes and preferences. Distinction is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind.

In this signal work of history, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lizabeth Cohen shows how the pursuit of prosperity after World War II fueled our pervasive consumer mentality and transformed American life.

Trumpeted as a means to promote the general welfare, mass consumption quickly outgrew its economic objectives and became synonymous with patriotism, social equality, and the American Dream. Material goods came to embody the promise of America, and the power of consumers to purchase everything from vacuum cleaners to convertibles gave rise to the power of citizens to purchase political influence and effect social change. Yet despite undeniable successes and unprecedented affluence, mass consumption also fostered economic inequality and the fracturing of society along gender, class, and racial lines. In charting the complex legacy of our “Consumers’ Republic” Lizabeth Cohen has written a bold, encompassing, and profoundly influential book.

In True Wealth , economist Juliet B. Schor rejects the sacrifice message, with the insight that social innovations and new technology can simultaneously enhance our lives and protect the planet. Schor shares examples of urban farmers, DIY renovators, and others working outside the conventional market to illuminate the path away from the work-and-spend cycle and toward a new world rich in time, creativity, information, and community.

The Overspent American explores why so many of us feel materially dissatisfied, why we work staggeringly long hours and yet walk around with ever-present mental “wish lists” of things to buy or get, and why Americans save less than virtually anyone in the world. Unlike many experts, Harvard economist Juliet B. Schor does not blame consumers’ lack of self-discipline. Nor does she blame advertisers. Instead she analyzes the crisis of the American consumer in a culture where spending has become the ultimate social art.

Marketing targeted at kids is virtually everywhere — in classrooms and textbooks, on the Internet, even at Girl Scout meetings, slumber parties, and the playground. Product placement and other innovations have introduced more subtle advertising to movies and television. Drawing on her own survey research and unprecedented access to the advertising industry, Juliet B. Schor, New York Times bestselling author of The Overworked American, examines how marketing efforts of vast size, scope, and effectiveness have created “commercialized children.”

Ads and their messages about sex, drugs, and food affect not just what children want to buy, but who they think they are. In this groundbreaking and crucial book, Schor looks at the consequences of the commercialization of childhood and provides guidelines for parents and teachers. What is at stake is the emotional and social well-being of our children.

Like Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia, and Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, Born to Buy is a major contribution to our understanding of a contemporary trend and its effects on the culture.

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard to find for lack of adequate data and clear guiding theories. In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty analyzes a unique collection of data from twenty countries, ranging as far back as the eighteenth century, to uncover key economic and social patterns. His findings will transform debate and set the agenda for the next generation of thought about wealth and inequality.

In The High Price of Materialism, Tim Kasser offers a scientific explanation of how our contemporary culture of consumerism and materialism affects our everyday happiness and psychological health. Other writers have shown that once we have sufficient food, shelter, and clothing, further material gains do little to improve our well-being. Kasser goes beyond these findings to investigate how people’s materialistic desires relate to their well-being. He shows that people whose values center on the accumulation of wealth or material possessions face a greater risk of unhappiness, including anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and problems with intimacy—regardless of age, income, or culture.

How the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite, and how their consumer habits affect us all

In today’s world, the leisure class has been replaced by a new elite. Highly educated and defined by cultural capital rather than income bracket, these individuals earnestly buy organic, carry NPR tote bags, and breast-feed their babies. They care about discreet, inconspicuous consumption–like eating free-range chicken and heirloom tomatoes, wearing organic cotton shirts and TOMS shoes, and listening to the Serial podcast. They use their purchasing power to hire nannies and housekeepers, to cultivate their children’s growth, and to practice yoga and Pilates. In The Sum of Small Things, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett dubs this segment of society “the aspirational class” and discusses how, through deft decisions about education, health, parenting, and retirement, the aspirational class reproduces wealth and upward mobility, deepening the ever-wider class divide.

The time was the 1980s. The place was Wall Street. The game was called Liar’s Poker.

Michael Lewis was fresh out of Princeton and the London School of Economics when he landed a job at Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s premier investment firms. During the next three years, Lewis rose from callow trainee to bond salesman, raking in millions for the firm and cashing in on a modern-day gold rush.

Liar’s Poker is the culmination of those heady, frenzied years—a behind-the-scenes look at a unique and turbulent time in American business. From the frat-boy camaraderie of the forty-first-floor trading room to the killer instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything on a high-stakes game of bluffing and deception, here is Michael Lewis’s knowing and hilarious insider’s account of an unprecedented era of greed, gluttony, and outrageous fortune.

Having made the U.S. financial crisis comprehensible for us all in “The Big Short”, Michael Lewis realised that he hadn’t begun to get grips with the full story. How exactly had it come to hit the rest of the world in the face too? Just how broke are we really? “Boomerang” is a tragi-comic romp across Europe, in which Lewis gives full vent to his storytelling genius.

The cheap credit that rolled across the planet between 2002 and 2008 was more than a simple financial phenomenon: it was temptation, offering entire societies the chance to reveal aspects of their characters they could not normally afford to indulge. Icelanders wanted to stop fishing and become investment bankers. The Greeks wanted to turn their country into a pinata stuffed with cash and allow as many citizens as possible to take a whack. The Irish wanted to stop being Irish. The Germans wanted to be even more German. Michael Lewis’ investigation of bubbles across Europe is brilliantly, sadly hilarious. He also turns a merciless eye on America: on California, the epicentre of world consumption, where we see that a final reckoning awaits the most avaricious of nations too.

Set in Los Angeles in the early 1980’s, Less than Zero has become a timeless classic. This coolly mesmerizing novel is a raw, powerful portrait of a lost generation who have experienced sex, drugs, and disaffection at too early an age. They live in a world shaped by casual nihilism, passivity, and too much money in a place devoid of feeling or hope.

Clay comes home for Christmas vacation from his Eastern college and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and absolute moral entropy, where everyone drives Porches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay’s holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs and also into the seamy world of L.A. after dark.

Narcissism—an inflated view of the self—is everywhere. Public figures say it’s what makes them stray from their wives. Parents teach it by dressing children in T-shirts that say “Princess.” Teenagers and young adults hone it on Facebook, and celebrity newsmakers have elevated it to an art form. And it’s what’s making people depressed, lonely, and buried under piles of debt.

Jean Twenge’s influential first book, Generation Me, spurred a national debate with its depiction of the challenges twenty- and thirty-somethings face in today’s world—and the fallout these issues create for educators and employers. Now, Dr. Twenge turns her focus to the pernicious spread of narcissism in today’s culture, which has repercussions for every age group and class. Dr. Twenge joins forces with W. Keith Campbell, Ph.D., a nationally recognized expert on narcissism, to explore this new plague in The Narcissism Epidemic, their eye-opening exposition of the alarming rise of narcissism and its catastrophic effects at every level of society.Even the world economy has been damaged by risky, unrealistic overconfidence.

This insider’s look at inherited wealth in the United States explores the complex meanings of money and success in American sociey with a new introduction that examinies whether America’s privileged class will be willing or able to play a leadership role in the twenty-first century.

From 1977 to 1985, Jim Goldberg photographed the wealthy and destitute of San Francisco, creating a visual document that has since become a landmark work.

Through the combination of text and photographs, Rich and Poor’s mass appeal was instantly recognizable. In 1984 the series was exhibited alongside Robert Adams and Joel Sternfeld in the Three Americansexhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and was published the following year by Random House.

Out of print since 1985, Rich and Poor has been completely redesigned and expanded by the artist for this Steidl edition. Available for the first time in hardcover, Rich and Poor builds upon the classic combination of photographs and handwriting and adds a surplus of vintage material and contemporary photographs that have never been published or exhibited.

The photographs in Rich and Poor constitute a shocking and gripping portrait of America during the 1970s and 80s that remains just as relevant today.

Bill Owens’s 1972 book Suburbia met with immediate success for its keen observation of middle-class America. Owens had recorded a generational phenomenon: the rapid migration of inner city apartment dwellers to affordable, newly produced homes in city outskirts. He realized that this wasn’t simply a demographic shift but a psychological one. Social critics had mocked the suburbs for their apparent conformity and spiritual emptiness. But Owens respected the liberation that many suburbanites felt, and their determination to build better lives.

A forensic, entertaining polemic from the author of The Pope’s Children. Ireland is deeply in debt, beholden to the IMF, the EU and the bond markets. Its economy is frozen, and years of austerity are ahead. It didn’t have to be this way – and it doesn’t have to be this way. In The Good Room, David McWilliams, who spotted the dangers of the Irish property bubble and imbalances within the eurozone at a time when other commentators were cheerleading the boom, explains the bizarre economics behind Ireland’s current predicament, and illuminates a different path for the country. He illustrates the consequences of debt and austerity for ordinary Irish people and explains why austerity can’t work. And he shows that history offers numerous useful models for Irish recovery – provided we open our eyes to them. Economics is about people like you. The Pope’s Children was the book that connected the dots between economics and daily life in Ireland during the boom years. The Good Room does the same for the Ireland of the bust, and is – in its call for a completely different approach – an even more urgent and necessary work.

The Queen of Versailles is a character-driven documentary about a billionaire family and their financial challenges in the wake of the economic crisis. With epic proportions of Shakespearean tragedy, the film follows two unique characters, whose rags-to-riches success stories reveal the innate virtues and flaws of the American Dream. The film begins with the family triumphantly constructing the largest privately-owned house in America, a 90,000 sq. ft. palace. Over the next two years, their sprawling empire, fueled by the real estate bubble and cheap money, falters due to the economic crisis. Major changes in lifestyle and character ensue within the cross-cultural household of family members and domestic staff.

The Academy Award® Winner for Best Documentary, Inside Job, directed by Charles Ferguson shows that the 2008 global financial Armageddon was no accident. It was predicted and could have been prevented. This compelling, serious, easy-to-follow film will make you want to raise your voice and declare…”Enough!”

A young and impatient stockbroker is willing to do anything to get to the top, including trading on illegal inside information taken through a ruthless and greedy corporate raider who takes the youth under his wing.

Acclaimed Emmy-winning documentary photographer/filmmaker, Lauren Greenfield is considered a preeminent chronicler of youth culture, gender and consumerism, as a result of her monographs “Fast Forward”, “Girl Culture”, “THIN”, “Generation Wealth” and other photographic works, which have been widely published, exhibited, and collected by museums around the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the J. Paul Getty Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Smithsonian, the International Center of Photography, the Center for Creative Photography, and the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston).

Recently, Greenfield directed the record-breaking Superbowl and viral spot “#LikeAGirl” (90+ million downloads and 12 billion impressions) which was voted by YouTube as the third best ad of the decade. Sweeping the advertising awards of 2015, Greenfield was named the #1 director and Most Awarded Director by AdAge, the first woman in commercial history to ever top this list, the spot won a 2015 Emmy, 14 Lions (including the Titanium Lion) at the Cannes Festival of Creativity, 7 Clios, 5 Art Directors, 8 pencils at the D & AD Awards, and the Best in Show at the AICP Awards, upon which it became part of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) collection. Additionally, ESPN has named her one of their Top 25 Impact Influencers of 2015 and the recently released sequel “Unstoppable Like a Girl” is one of the top 10 YouTube ads of 2015, having received 80 million impressions to date.

Her latest feature-length film, “The Queen of Versailles” was the Opening Night film of Sundance 2012 where it won the Best Director Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition. “The Queen of Versailles” went on to box office success and critical acclaim, including winning the Brisbane International Film Festival Prize, and nominations for Best Documentary by the Directors Guild, International Documentary Association, Critics Choice, and the London Critics Circle Film Awards. Lauren previously directed three award-winning documentary films – “THIN” (HBO), “kids + money” (HBO) and “Beauty CULTure” (Annenberg Space for Photography) that opened at Sundance and Tribeca Film Festivals.

Named one of the 2015 Top 10 directors in Adweek’s Most Creative 100 People and by American Photo as one of the 25 most influential photographers working today, Greenfield started her career as an intern for National Geographic after graduating from Harvard in 1987. Her photographs have regularly appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Time, GQ, and The Guardian, and have won many awards including the ICP Infinity Award, the Hasselblad Grant, the Community Awareness Award from the National Press Photographers, and the Moscow Biennial People’s Choice Award. She lectures at museums and universities around the world and serves on the Advisory Committee of Harvard University’s Office for the Arts.

NOW- The Smarter Women’s Weekly (UK)
“Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood” (Fast Forward), May 8, 1997, pp. 28-29

Nylon
“The Weighting Game,” November 2006

Oprah Magazine (USA)
“It’s never too late, you’re never too old, never too sick to start over again! This thought drives me back into the 105-degree room day after day.” Part 2 of 2, February 2010, p. 196-201, Paige Williams
“My bra’s too tight. Is that cellulite on my biceps? I might be having a heart attack. And why does everybody in here have a tattoo?” Part 1 of 2, January 2010, p. 124-128, Paige Williams
“To Beat the Unbeatable Foe” (HIV Survivors), November 2007, p. 312
“Who’s on Top?” August 2005, p. 155
“Sex and the six year old girl” (Girl Culture), September 2004, p, 209-210, Amy Bloom

The Queen of Versailles (2012)

The Queen of Versailles is a character-driven documentary about a billionaire family and their financial challenges in the wake of the economic crisis. With epic proportions of Shakespearean tragedy, the film follows two unique characters, whose rags-to-riches success stories reveal the innate virtues and flaws of the American Dream. The film begins with the family triumphantly constructing the largest privately-owned house in America, a 90,000 sq. ft. palace. Over the next two years, their sprawling empire, fueled by the real estate bubble and cheap money, falters due to the economic crisis. Major changes in lifestyle and character ensue within the cross-cultural household of family members and domestic staff.

THIN (2006)

This film takes an affecting look at the struggles of women to overcome eating disorders. Photographer Lauren Greenfield goes inside the Renfrew Center in Coconut Creek, FL--a facility dedicated to helping women and girls overcome these disorders.

Magic City, A Film by Lauren Greenfield (Director's Cut, 2015)

Welcome to Magic City, a legendary strip club where dreams are made, whether for the dancers seeking fame and fortune, the rappers using it as a platform to the big time, or the ballers making it rain. Renowned documentarian, Lauren Greenfield, takes us into the heart of Atlanta’s sexiest music factory.

Bling Dynasty (2015)

For the über-rich in China it's not enough to own luxury goods, you need to know how to live a life of luxury. That's where Sara Jane Ho comes in. The Phillips-Exeter and Georgetown alumna is pioneering the etiquette industry in her native country to help affluent clients cultivate a refined taste, like napkin folding and learning how to eat "tricky" foods.

Kids + Money (2008)

In the documentary short film "kids + money", Director Lauren Greenfield returns to her native Los Angeles to take the cultural temperature of a generation imprinted by commercial values. Born of the extremes of poverty and wealth that define the Los Angeles landscape, kids tell their stories in a series of cinematic portraits.

Beauty CULTure (2011)

Beauty Culture investigates our obsession with beauty and the influence of photographic representations on female body image. Film subjects hail from diverse points on the beauty landscape. Fashion photographers, child pageant stars, bodybuilders, teenagers, and intellectuals engage in a provocative dialogue that addresses the persistent "beauty contest" of daily life.

Fashion Show (2010)

Lauren Greenfield's video "Fashion Show" mixes filmed footage with still photography from over 50 runway shows in New York, Milan and Paris. Cut to the pulsating beat of Fol Chen's latest musical single, "The Longer You Wait", the multimedia piece is an experiential journey through the life of the definitive fashion show.

THIN (monograph)

Critically acclaimed for Girl Culture and Fast Forward, Lauren Greenfield continues her exploration of contemporary female culture with Thin, a groundbreaking book about eating disorders. Greenfield's photographs are paired with extensive interviews and journal entries from twenty girls and women who are suffering from various afflictions. We meet 15-year-old Brittany, who is convinced that being thin is the only way to gain acceptance among her peers; Alisa, a divorced mother of two whose hatred of her body is manifested in her relentless compulsion to purge; Shelly, who has been battling anorexia for six years and has had a feeding tube surgically implanted in her stomach; as well as many others. Alongside these personal stories are essays on the sociology and science of eating disorders by renowned researchers Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Dr. David Herzog, and Dr. Michael Strober. These intimate photographs, frank voices, and thoughtful discussions combine to make Thin not only the first book of its kind but also a portrait of profound understanding.

Girl Culture (monograph)

Revealing and insightful, Lauren Greenfield's classic monograph on the lives of American girls is back in print. Greenfield's award-winning photographs capture the ways in which girls are affected by American popular culture. With an eye for both the common and the eccentric, she visits girls of all ages, discussing issues ranging from eating disorders and self-mutilation to spring break and prom. With more than 100 mesmerizing photographs, 18 interviews, and an introduction by social and cultural historian Joan Jacobs Brumberg, this book is as vital and relevant now as when it was first published.

Fast Forward (monograph)

Lauren Greenfield's acclaimed Fast Forward is a powerful look at Los Angeles youth culture and its influence on the rest of our society. From the affluent children of the Westside to the graffiti gangs and party crews of East LA, young Angelenos reckon with an overwhelming barrage of advertising and entertainment images emphasizing money, possessions, and eternal youth. This collection of 79 color photographs, accompanied by interviews with the children and their parents, reveals the realities of growing up fast in a culture that is at once irresistible and unforgiving.